Test Drive Unlimited (Xbox 360)

Each island is instanced for that session and the servers have been up and down most of the time during the first few weeks. There has been at least one patch and this improved the experience in game overall, but seemed to have taken some of the features offline for a while.

Speed freaks beware, there are cops in TDU and they will bust you if you draw too much heat. There’s a lot of money to be made in the game, and lost to traffic cops – be warned it’s not much fun to sit in jail for around 30 minutes in the game if you’re caught too many times and run out of cash to pay the fines.

As you explore the island you’ll unlock new areas to visit, new showrooms and a few specialist places. Eventually you’ll unlock the custom paint shop and the high end tuners, the tuning isn’t as involved as some games of this type but it’s enough to give you an edge over the competition and to blow some cash.

You can join or form race clubs, these are one way to race with your friends and it’s nice to see that your avatar appears in your club house. It’s a shame that you can’t however see your friends on the same island as you – we tried this several times and perhaps they’ll add the functionality in a patch. There’s also no way to actually explore the island with your friends outside of a long race, and that’s a bit of a let down to be honest.

Split screen racing or system link would have been a nice feature but the developers seem to have forgotten that not everyone actually has broadband and a good enough connection, let alone access to Xbox Live. So in short in this respect it’s not quite a good SP game and it lacks a lot as a MP game. But there’s no monthly fee and that’s a bonus.

There is a lot to do on the island, but it’s pretty much just all about cruising around, racing, picking up cash and spending it to gain more and more material things. Stocking cars in your garage, getting better and bigger houses are pretty much the driving forces behind the game. You can buy/sell cars in an online auction house and even create challenges for people to compete in, in the drive in, so there’s always going to be newly created player content.

Controls

You need good controls in a racing game and TDU doesn’t disappoint, there’s a good mix of driving options available and the game can be configured to allow for novice or expert drivers, you can have full control of the car’s braking and handling or you can set the driving aid to full and not have to worry too much about spinning out etc.

Apart from this the controls in the game are your standard fare, accelerate and brake on the right and left triggers. You flash your lights with A and the D-Pad controls various functions such as the GPS system, driving aid and the radio.

GPS Map

The game features one of the most comprehensive GPS and maps yet. There’s a lot of functionality in the map and you can use it to port from one place to the next once you’ve unlocked the road or area, it saves on having to drive half way across the massive island to get to a race or a club. Zoom all the way out and you’ll get a shot of the Earth with the credits for the game, an amusing touch.

You can set a GPS marker and your in-car voice will then give you pointers as you drive there. However sometimes the GPS seems to forget to tell you when a turn is coming up and sometimes it tells you too late.